This site is devoted to the early history of the portable typewriter, from 1890 to 1930, illustrated by antique typewriters from my collection.

The portable typewriter industry was born at the beginning of the
last century. Famous names like Smith-Corona, Remington, Underwood,
Royal and Imperial, flourished as globally recognised brands, and
collectively the companies sold tens of millions of typewriters all
round the world, changing office working habits forever. Yet by the
1990s, all the famous names had been overwhelmed by the computer
revolution, and one by one went into liquidation or were bought out.

Today, the famous name typewriter firms like Remington and Underwood are all
gone forever. Yet curiously, the typewriters they made, their company logos,
their instruction booklets, their magazine adverts, and even the
disciplines they introduced to office life, remain behind like archaeological finds from a lost world. This site is my personal
tribute to those companies, their entrepreneurs, inventors, engineers
and salespeople, and my way of celebrating the passing of an invention
that was an important part of my life as a writer and journalist.

Richard Milton
To explore the lost world of the portable typewriter, click any picture
on this site.

The
Beginning . . . .This
is the prototype of the first commercially successful portable
typewriter, invented in 1904. It was thought to be lost
for 100 years but was recently found again through engineering
detective work. To read the story of its rediscovery. Click here »»»

. . . And the EndThe era of the mechanical portable typewriter came to an end
in 1957 when Smith-Corona launched the world's first electric
portable machine. To read about this revolutionary
typewriter and its impact.

In the decades between these two machines was a brief, glorious and crazy age in
which some of the world's biggest corporations tried to persuade us to
buy into their way of printing letters on the page. Find
out how successful they were by clicking on the famous«««««« brands shown at
left and right.»»»»»»

Our
Latest Addition . . .
This beautiful machine is the Noiseless Portable
of 1921. Silent typing was the holy grail of most
manufacturers - it was achieved by one of the
most prolific of all typewriter inventors -
Wellington Parker Kidder. Find out how he did
it here.